How to have law and order without tyranny? That is the question. Israel began as a rather loosely connected tribal confederacy. The Israelite tribes were led by charismatic leaders, or judges, under the divine direction of Yahweh. They were supposed to be knit together in one harmonious unit. They would avoid the tyranny, which was the result of being governed by a king. Instead, they would have Yahweh alone as their king. It sounded good, and certainly the book of the Judges reflects moments of such peaceful unity, but reality was often quite different.

Israel was a very marginal community, economically weak, living under constant threat from the Philistines and getting mired in all sorts of tribal violence, brutality, and moral chaos. The situation is summed up at the end of the book of…